Management of the Institute

Dr. Markus Wolperdinger has been director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB since 2018. Wolperdinger holds a PhD in chemistry and has many years of industrial experience in industrial biotechnology, plant engineering and the translation of scientific findings into industrial implementation. His international career has taken Wolperdinger from development, sales and management positions at innovative start-up companies and in medium-sized industry to leading positions in globally operating industrial groups. Wolperdinger is spokesperson of the strategic research field of Bioeconomy of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and chair of the Fraunhofer Group for Resource Technologies and Bioeconomy. He is active as an advisor and expert in numerous commissions and committees at state, national and European level.

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Prof. Dr. Steffen Rupp has been deputy director of Fraunhofer IGB since 2015, and since 2019 he has coordinated activities in the Health Business Unit at the institute. The chemist joined Fraunhofer IGB in 1999, establishing the junior research group "Automated Protein Screening Systems". In 2006, Rupp became head of the new Molecular Biotechnology department. Since 2004, Rupp has been a private lecturer at the University of Stuttgart, and in 2015 he was appointed associate professor of Molecular Biotechnology.

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Dr. Ursula Schließmann was appointed deputy director of the institute in 2022. Since 2019, she has been coordinating activities in the institute's Environment and Climate Protection business area. Previously, the process engineer was head of the Environmental and Bioprocess Engineering Department at the IGB. Among other positions, Schließmann is vice director of the Fraunhofer Innovation Platform Water-Energy-Food Nexus at Stellenbosch University in South Africa and a board member of German Water Partnership (GWP). She is also head of the Fraunhofer Alliance SysWater office. 

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